Roll of Thunder...

For my book I am reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. “ I am really enjoying my book. It is about an African American family that is experiencing very rude and cruel behavior towards them. They are getting beaten and harassed. Many whites are very racist to them.
It shows the many differences of the culture of African-Americans back in the sixties. It also shows how the race isn’t different and they should be treated equally. They aren’t very rich and they are a family with a girl, 3 boys, a mother, a grandmother, and a father that is barely ever home. Their father is constantly working for the family and the mother is a teacher. But they still do not have a lot of money. People will shove them and make fun of them and it makes you think, why would they do that? It’s just a person just like me and you. It is just like harassing somebody of your own race. They look different from the outside but are very similar on the inside. They are the same race: Human. Not one race is better than the other. I know many people that would disagree but according to my family and I, all people, black, white, brown, or blue, are equal. In the book, there is a very racist group of people with the last name of Wallace. They beat up all of the black kids that come by and don’t let blacks enter their store. They are one of those groups that think one race is better than the other. If people learn this, the world would be much more peaceful and a lot of more people will be happy. But from where we stand, racism has decreased and continues to decrease but there will also be that one little group of people.

Smashed Off the Tracks

I awoke in the morning, as tired as can be, and got ready for a very long day. Today, I was taking part in a huge model train racing meet; the national championship for my age group. I had had a great season so far and, feeling very confident, I had a feeling that I would have a swell meet today. I, settling down for breakfast, looked out the window and saw a large train going by; quickly flashing my mind on about a dream I had had the night before.

I had dreamt that I was a conductor of a racing train that was black, with some red racing stripes, and I was in first place coming to the end of the race. Hurriedly, I took over the lead from the former 1st placeman, my arch rival, Ty-rainasauraus Rex. I then heard the announcer yell into the earthshaking megaphone, “And the Black Stallion has taken the lead.” Feeling startled by the loud megaphone, I forcefully shutting my ears, lost control of the train. A few seconds later, I was riding at high speed off of the tracks and still going but slightly tipping. I was frightened, and I saw my rival, Ty-rainasauraus Rex, pass me up again. So I hurried back to my controls, skillfully turned the train back onto the tracks and luckily, while making it back onto the tracks, knocked the back of Ty-rainasauraus Rex off of the tracks and he started to fall off the tracks. He, also being very skilled, managed to maintain complete balance even with his tail-end hanging off of the tracks. Eventually, I caught up to him face-to-face and realized, again being skilled at noticing mistakes, that all of his controls were turning the train to the right, so if I did not get out of the way soon, I would be smashed off of the tracks. So I backed up and this time, was ready for the announcer to scream out his mind in wondering what I was doing. Sure enough, he did- I immediately heard “And the Black Stallion is backing off and letting Ty-rainasauraus Rex take over the lead.” I was, hopefully, foreshadowing what was going to happen; but as of right now, as was going to lose because the other train was still ahead and controlling well. Luckily he, screaming and jumping out of the train, lost control of his train and his train fell off of the tracks and crashed into a big building. As I predicted, I crossed the line in first place. Then, when I was about to get my award, my loudly buzzing alarm clock went off.

That day, at my tough train racing meet, I went 8-2 for the round robin; winning the first seven then going 1-2. I won in the quarter finals in a very long and grueling match while advancing to the semi-finals. In the semis, I raced in an even closer race and won by a hair. In the finals, I faced the Raptor- which was another dinosaur name, and I was the Blue Bronco- which was a horse as well. I was blue with red racing stripes. It was a close race throughout and near the end, the Raptor fell off of the tracks and I ended up winning the race. My dream was what happened in real life but with no announcer.

Boxes of Sand

When I was a kid, I would love to come home from school every day and to get out of the boring building. I would come home, eat a snack, and then go outside. I always loved when I could go outside because that meant I could play in my homemade sand box. I loved playing in my sandbox. My sandbox had a lot of toys and the best thing about it was that my sandbox had a built-in crane. I would always lift up all of the sand with the crane and bury the toys. Then I would search for the toys in the sand and bash the toys together and I would break a lot of them. The toys were really fun to play with but I liked my sandbox but I like my sandbox for other things as well.

I really like playing in my sandbox and mostly in the summer. I liked the sandbox in the summer because all of the sand was really warm. I could bury myself in the sand and it would make you feel so good. It felt like being in a hot tub but it was a sand box. It was one of the greatest feelings that I have ever felt. I would still play with the toys but the sand being warm was the best part.

I guess there were three things that I did not like about the sandbox. One was that the sand would get into your pants and it would not come out no matter how many times you shook the pants out. The sand was very irritating and I would have to go inside if too much sand found its way into my pants. I had to be careful that the sand would not end up in my pants. The only other things that I did not like about my sandbox were when it was raining outside and when the weather was cool. When it was rainy, the sandbox would flood and when the weather was cool, the sand was cool and it was not fun to play with. After it rained, the rain would make the sand clump into a ball and it wasn’t fun anymore. I didn’t like it when the weather was cold either because it makes your body cold. I don’t know if it makes me weird, but I like warm over cold.

The Big Fish

There were many strange things going on one day in my life.

I woke up that day and went up the stairs to find 4 animals running all over my house. They had chewed up the furniture, ate all of our food, and broke many things. I walked into the kitchen and my wife was screaming for everyone to clean up. She was going to make breakfast but soon she realized that the animals had devoured all of the food. She told me to get rid of the creatures so I did. Every time I did get rid of them, they came back. It seemed like I could not get rid of them. My wife and I had to get to work so we took the animals and put them into a building that would tame the creatures.

After I finally left my house, I went to my work. I was working fine and then my phone had rang. The tamer I had left the creatures with was calling to say that the animals were too vicious and that they were getting in too much trouble. I had to leave work and go get the animals even though I did not want to see them at the time. I walked into the calming clinic and everything was tore up. The furniture was all scratch and there was food everywhere. I took the animals and I let them outside again because I did not want to deal with them but I had too. After work, I walked into my house to be surprised by the 4 animals inside my house and they had eaten all of my food again. I had to get rid of them but wherever I put them, they would find a way to get back into the house.

My house was practically ruined by these creatures. I decided that they could live with us. Every time they did not listen, I would punish them. Eventually, the animals had learned their lesson and were behaving more. I realized how to deal with the evil animals and they seemed to not be so bad after all. They turned out to be very responsible and they weren't ruining our house anymore.

China Renews Opposition to Iran Sanctions

China is hurting themselves by not going into sanctions with Iran.

With China opposing Iran sanctions, Iran will not act. Right now, China thinks that Iran is harmless and is using the enrichment plants for “A peaceful use of nuclear energy,” according to China’s foreign minister Yang Jiechi. But Iran was caught with underground uranium plants out of nowhere. To make matter worse, Iran had just announced that they have make nuclear weapons. Now Iran’s enemies are in trouble (Israel for example). If Iran does harm a country, other countries will be angry at China for not acting with Iran and China would have some consequences. But if China does help, Iran could have their nuclear plants shutdown.

China could also support the Iran sanctions and doing that would help China and the world out. China is allies with Iran so if China supports the sanctions, they would get Iran to act and to realize how much controversy that they are causing in the world. Iran would get their nuclear power enriched by the U.S. and Russia. The U.N. could shut down the underground plants and Iran’s nuclear weapons would be gone.

Some people might think that China should continue to not support sanctions because China won’t be able to change Iran’s mind. They might think the Iran will continue to make the weapons anyway. But, with the power of China added to the U.N., the U.N. would be more powerful and could shut down the power plants and could bring the nuclear weapons in Iran to a stop

My favorite English class I have ever had in 9th grade

In Global Ed. English, I learned many things that I did not know.

For instance, I learned that I can actually be a good writer. In the beginning of the year, I wrote three papers and got 2 D’s and a C. But after being told that I needed to develop my papers and I needed a focal point about a million times, I finally got the idea. I took a couple months but I got a C+ which was above average. Then we started to write a blog every week and that helped me out to get used to writing papers. Since the blogs, I’ve amazingly got only B’s and A-‘s on my papers. From the beginning of the year, I thought that I would drop the class and it would be a very long semester. It still is hard but I have gotten the hang of things and I am a much better writer now.

Another thing I learned was how to take notes. I just figured notes were writing down things that I thought were interesting. I was right but there was way more to it. From the beginning we margin noted a lot which is pretty much like highlighting with some writing in the margins. That was boring but sort of easy. The notes that really bothered me were Q.C.V.I.’s (Questions, Connections, vocabulary, and Interesting/Important facts). First taking them, they were easy to me except for the connections because I could find a way to connect with the stories in many ways. We always had to do 5 of each and one day, Mr. Fielder changed it to 2 questions and 2 connections. I was happy but he said the questions had to be discussion and the connections had to be developed. Now the connections were easier but discussion questions were hard to find. I eventually got the hang of it though.

The third thing that I learned was that there is a lot more to capitalization than and the beginnings of the sentences and proper nouns. There turned out to be many properties of capitalization that I didn’t know about. I then got the capitalization thing and after you understood it, you understood it well. Or so you thought. We had a pop quiz on capitalization and I blew through it but it turned out that I got a lot wrong. I had more wrong than I had right and I didn’t know what was going on. We got another packet and we had to practically memorize the rules. After studying the rules of capitalization, we took a third test on it and I did pretty well on the third test.

After the capitalization, I learned something yet again, How to research on the computer. Yes, I know researching sounds like the easiest thing to do in school, but when you have Mr. Fielder, that is a whole different story (in a good way). He made you look for a source and he had to check it. I only had a bad source once so the researching was pretty easy for me but without learning what a credible source would be, I would have probably just picked the first topic I saw. But then we had to search stories for our topic on South Africa. I thought like it would be the Rwanda articles (the articles that were easy to find). It was for the first two I found. I googled the topic, printed it out, and he checked it. But then I couldn’t find any more that he would okay so I kept looking. It took a while but I finally got Mr. Fielder to check a third article.

What we spent most of the semester on were foreign countries. The foreign countries we studied were Australia, then Rwanda, and then South Africa. I used the things that I learned to learn about these foreign countries. We read a novel about Australian Aborigines called Walkabout and watched a movie called Rabbit Proof Fence. We had to write a paper comparing the two and because of the writing skills I learned, I was able to do a good job on the paper. Then for Rwanda, that was the most difficult for me because there was so much going on in the genocide of Rwanda that I was confused. But the movie Hotel Rwanda helped me get a better understanding of what was going on. And we last learned about South Africa. This was probably the easiest for me to understand because it was semi-modern day and the only time that there was too much going on was the Anglo-Boer war. But research helped me understand the topic more. I understood my topic, which was the first and second decade of freedom but the movie Invictus helped me understand it more. My learning help me learn even more in this class.

The Native I would be

If I was a native to any country we have learned about, I would be a native to Australia.

I would be an Aborigine of Australia because of the fact that they were not brutally murdered and because they still live today after being the longest existing tribe in the world. They have been around for about 50,000 years and they are still around. The Aborigines being around for 50,000 years is one reason that I would be an Aborigine. Most natives from countries don’t last even a hundred and they have lasted more than 500 times that amount. They have lasted longer than your great X5,000 grandparents and they were treated poorly by the British and almost eliminated their culture. Another reason I would be an Aborigine is that they stand out from the rest that they have an ancient culture in a modern time. They have passed on their cultures for all those generations. That makes it seem like the Aborigines are a very strong group of people and care a lot about their culture. They seem dedicated and strong so that is something I like about them.


Some people would argue that the Aborigines were treated more poorly than other countries and that they would rather be some other country. First of all, it is their opinion and they can think what they want. I still think that being an Aborigine is the safest bet. Looking at how both the Tutsis and Hutus were slaughtered. Native Americans were kicked out further and further to the west then some were slaves while others were killed. In South Africa, the people were forced out of their homes and moved north. Yes, some Aborigines were killed and were forced out of their homes but not nearly as much as other countries and they were able to stand up for their culture and their land and are still around today. Natives Rwandans have only been around for about 200 years, Native Americans are barely seen anywhere now, and South Africans were never heard of again so Aborigines are the most successful because they are still around. Rwandans and Native Americans are also around but have not been around anywhere close to 50,000 years.